Washington at work

With the Syrian crisis in the hands of the diplomats for now, talk in Washington has returned to the impasse in Congress, with a Republican-controlled House priming for a fight with the Democratic-controlled Senate over raising the nation's debt ceiling.

On Friday, the House fired the opening shot in the latest standoff by approving a funding bill by a vote of 230 to 189. The measure would keep the government going, but it would also strip out any money for Obamacare.

The Senate is likely to reply this week by amending that measure to put funding for the health-care law back in place. And so the fight continues.

But there's something not quite right about casting this fight as a standoff between two coequal halves of the nation's legislative branch, with each of the major political parties controlling one half.

To be sure, a bicameral legislature is one of the key features of our representative democracy, but the Constitution enumerates different and sometimes exclusive powers to the House and the Senate. And when iT comes to the power of the purse, the Constitution is quite clear:

"All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives;" declares Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution, "but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills."

That provision is of paramount importance in understanding the ongoing debate over how, when and with what conditions Congress will raise the nation's debt ceiling.

Last time around, Congress conducted this debate under threat of the sequester, a series of blunt, across-the-board cuts that, while described as cuts by some, really amounted to nothing more than a slight reduction in the rate at which government spending would increase.

In the months since, the sequester has been blamed for just about everything, but two points bear repeating. First, an agreement in Congress on different cuts would have avoided the sequester. Second, to break the impasse in Washington, it's not enough to control the Senate and the White House. You have to persuade the House, for it holds the purse strings.

This time, the terms of the debate are a bit different, with tea party elements in the GOP attempting to defund Obamacare as their price for raising the nation's borrowing limit. Some, particularly on the political left, suggest such tactics are unfair, out of order, and doomed to fail.

In fact, it is neither unfair nor out of order to play hardball if you believe, as many fiscal conservatives do, that government spending is out of control, and will only be made worse by Obamacare.

Whether the GOP's Friday vote is politically wise remains to be seen. Democrats think it may aid their effort to take back the House in 2014. Perhaps. But members of the House stand for election every two years, and the House that voted Friday emerged from voting less than a year ago. There is every reason to believe that a modest majority of Americans want Congress to show greater fiscal restraint.

If not, the 2014 midterm elections will afford Americans another opportunity to make their meaning clearer.

Until then, talk of an "intransigent majority" of the GOP blocking the work of the Senate and president is as partisan as it is irrelevant. What's on display in Washington is neither new nor alarming. It's simply how our system works.

And if the worst fallout is another impasse leading to a temporary government shutdown, and a continuation of the sequester cuts until Republicans and Democrats can work out their differences, we'll count that as a victory for fiscal sanity.

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